MASON JAR MOOD LAMP

Introduction: MASON JAR MOOD LAMP

I wanted to create something for upcoming New Year gift to present my parent.At the same time I saw a competition on MASON JAR is going on in instructructables. So it only made sense that I would use mason jars to make simple DIY lamp.Making mason jar lights is really, really easy!.After all this is what I came up with.It is the perfect blend of rustic and tech, don’t you think?

This is a dark activated color changing mood lamp. Its brains is a ATtiny85, but you could also use an Arduino.It has a light sensor which sense the light condition and decide when the room light is turned off.This then will light a RGB LED and slowly fade through different colors.

Step 2: Schematic and Working :

The brain of the lamp is Attiny85. The LDR and 10K resitor makes the light sensor.The sensor output is connected to the attiny analog pin-3.The sensor detect when the room is dark and tell attiny to give varying pwm signals to the RGB led.According to the different values of PWM signal the color of the RGB led changes.For power switch I used a sliding switch.

Working

The ATtiny85 only has 2 PWM pins.But to change the color of a RGB led we need 3 PWM pins.This limitation is overcome by using software PWM.This means that you can fade in and out of all 3 colors using any of the pins on the ATtiny.The software PWM works by setting the pin HIGH and then LOW at different rates so that the LED looks like it's dimming. This is called Persistence of Vision or POV. The LED blinks so rapidly that the human eye can't detect that it is flashing at all, and it sees instead that the LED appears to be dimming.

Step 7: Program the Attiny85

There are many great sites and other instructables that give step by step instructions on how to program a ATtiny85 with a Arduino. The reason I used the ATtiny85 was because it is a cheap chip and the size is very small .

I program it on a bread board.If you have a shield then it is very easy.

Step 8: Frosting the Jar

You can use your imagination to find a way to diffuse colors uniformly. Color diffusion is necessary to achieve best results.So frosting of jar is needed.The best way to frost the mason jar is by using frosting spray paint.

I'm in the process of making this and finally got the battery holders and switches in. As soon as I opened the bag for the holders (that are recommended), I noticed that they are too small. They are for LR44 and not CR2032 batteries. I think that the link should go to something like this instead of what you have listed :-(. I could probably use three(3) of the smaller batteries in series, but it would then have a larger footprint and might not fit in a standard mason jar.

Other than that, the instructable is easy to follow, even when using a common cathode RGB LED.

You can use a tactile switch if you design a soft latching switch, search on google you'll find tons of shematics! Even Dave Jones from EEVBlog have designed one very easy, i'll link you the schematics http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Foc9R0dC2iI/hqdefault.jpg